Why Neasden Drives and Paths Suit Garden Ants
Black garden ants want loose, dry, sun-warmed material they can dig through without being disturbed, and the sand bed under block paving is close to ideal. A drive warms up through the afternoon, sheds water quickly and is never turned over, so a colony can sit beneath it for years. What shows is fine soil pushed up between the blocks, at the edge of a slab or along the mortar joint beside the path, usually in the same few places every summer. Where ants nest around houses lists the other places worth a look.
Side doors, garage doors and thresholds
The way in is nearly always a threshold. These houses have a path along the side to a back door, a side door into the garage, and very often an internal door from the garage into the hall or kitchen. A worn weather bar, the gap under an up-and-over door and the joint where the path meets the wall all give ants a dry route under cover, and once they are in the garage they are one doorway from the kitchen.
Warm kitchens at the back of the house
Ants come indoors for food rather than shelter, which is why the kitchen is where a trail becomes obvious — along a skirting, up the back of a unit, across the worktop to something sweet. Warmth keeps them working earlier in the year and later into the autumn than the garden would. Finding ants in the kitchen hardly ever means the nest is in the kitchen, so follow the line back to the door, air brick or floor joint it comes through. Why ants keep coming into the kitchen takes it further.
Flying Ant Days Over Hot Paving
On two or three muggy days in July or August, colonies send winged queens and males out together, and paving that has been baking since lunchtime is exactly the launch pad they use. Winged ants streaming from a joint in the drive only confirm what is underneath it. Coming up through a kitchen floor, from behind a skirting or out of an air brick, they suggest a nest under the house or the back extension, which is worth mentioning when you call. Why flying ants appear indoors explains the day itself. Insects using one gap steadily for weeks are not ants at all but a wasp nest.
Small Pale Ants Indoors Are a Different Job
Pharaoh ants are much smaller and a pale yellowish brown, and they nest inside heated buildings rather than out in the garden, so flats above the Neasden Lane shops and low-rise blocks are the likelier setting. Shop-bought sprays can make such a colony split and spread through a building, so it pays to know which ant you have before anything is put down. Pharaoh ants vs garden ants covers the difference, and small insects moving about a warm kitchen after dark may not be ants but cockroaches.
Booking, and the Weeks That Follow
- Say whether it is a house or a flat, and which door, air brick or floor joint the ants come in at
- Follow the trail outside if you can, and note where it vanishes under paving or along a wall
- Stop spraying the trail, so it is still there to be followed on the day
- Wipe worktops with warm soapy water and lift pet bowls off the floor overnight
Ants can still be about for a while after the visit, and how long depends on the size of the colony and how far under the paving it runs, which how long ant treatment takes explains. If the trail has not faded away, call us back and describe where you are seeing them. Powders and sprays on their own rarely settle it, for the reasons in why ants come back after DIY treatment.
Keeping Ants Off the Drive and Out of the Kitchen
Once the colony has been dealt with, the job is to make the route in less inviting. How to stop ants entering your home has more on this, and Ant Control Brent covers the rest of the borough.
- Top up the jointing sand in block paving and re-point cracked mortar where the path meets the house wall
- Renew the draught seal and weather bar on the back door and the garage side door
- Close the gap under an up-and-over garage door with a brush strip
- Keep bins off the edge of the drive and sweep up spilled bird seed and fallen fruit
- Cut back shrubs touching the front wall and deal with aphids on them, since ants farm aphids for honeydew
